


Consequences

by 7PercentSolution



Series: Got My Eye on You [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Sherlock Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7PercentSolution/pseuds/7PercentSolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now working with Lestrade's Murder Investigation Team, Sherlock pushes the boundaries a bit too far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was Lestrade's worst nightmare. He worked hard to keep an eye on his team, and their record of injuries was testament to his success. The Homicide and Serious Crimes Division was tough enough, but the Murder Investigation Teams were a class unto themselves. Most of the criminals they apprehended were by definition more than willing to use lethal force to resist arrest. Mind you, health and safety was an important part of police training at Hendon College, and the Met put a high premium on ensuring that the public was not harmed by police activity, and that colleagues looked after one another.

Unfortunately for the DI, his civilian consulting detective had not been a graduate of Hendon, and he often drove Lestrade to distraction, as a result. Over the past five years, Sherlock's tendency to go off on his own in pursuit of suspects had led to more than his fair share of knocks, scrapes and bruises, not to mention two broken bones.

No matter how many times he lectured the lanky brunet, Lestrade knew that the temptation would always be there. So, three years ago he instituted a new team procedure. One of the police constables would be tasked with keeping his or her eye on Sherlock at a crime scene and if he went off on his own, to follow closely and serve as backup.

Sally Donovan was the one who called it "babysitting". Lestrade couldn't stop the team from using the pejorative phrase amongst themselves, but he made it absolutely clear that it could never be used in the earshot of the individual concerned, unless the person wanted an official reprimand on their file.

Tonight, however, he was beginning to see Sally's point of view. It had been like dozens of earlier cases- a baffled team standing around late at night eying an unnamed unidentified dead body, while Sherlock unleashed his deductive observations. "You're looking for a suspect who is approximately six foot tall, and nearly 200 pounds. The fact that he lifted the body from the car and carried it a good forty feet to this waste ground from the nearest road is sign of considerable upper body strength.. He's left handed, and works in manual labour, most likely to be a plumber, given the weapon is a pipe bender."

The Forensic Crime Scene Examiner looked puzzled at this last statement, and Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Oh, do keep up, Jeffries; the wound is clearly caused by a blunt instrument and the copper shavings beside the body are highly indicative of piping rubbish that clogs up a bender. This is hardly rocket science." Lestrade was just thankful it wasn't Anderson who had been assigned to the crime; Sherlock would have been far ruder if that had been the case.

"You need to look on the traffic cameras for a plumber's van in the vicinity, during the hours of four to six pm, and that will start your process of elimination. A door-to-door canvass should reveal where he was working and possibly get you an ID for the body. " Lestrade stepped in at this moment and assigned roles to the Sally and the two PCs, on the case. It was late, so they'd need to work fast on the door to door work; too many people would refuse to answer their doors if it got much later, even to the police. It was a rough neighbourhood.

Jeffries continued his processing of the body, bagging the hands and feet to protect any trace, and unzipping the body bag that would be used to transport the dead man to the morgue. Sherlock just watched, and then turned away, lost in thought. Lestrade asked Sally if she thought there was any connection between this murder and the body they had found on a construction site six weeks ago. That case had turned up no clues as to why the electrician would have been killed; their investigation turned up no motive or viable suspects. Sally was mulling over the idea when Lestrade heard the tell-tale "OH!"

Sally flinched at the sound of Sherlock's exclamation. "God, he sounds like he just had an orgasm or something. I've always said he gets off on this stuff." Lestrade grimaced, by but the time he'd turned around, Sherlock was more than half-way across the waste ground and gathering speed. In the darkness, it was hard to see where he was headed.

"Roberts! Get after him, will you!?" Lestrade glared at the newest PC on the team, who'd only been in post for three weeks, and had not yet had a stint on Sherlock watch.

By the time the constable had reached the fence on the far side, Sherlock had vanished. Roberts looked back at the pool of crime scene lights, and wondered what he was supposed to do now. When he used his airwave radio to tell Sally that he'd lost track of Holmes, the news was greeted by an expletive, and he heard her call out "Lestrade, he's done it again, run off. Why the hell he can't tell somebody what's going on, I don't know. He's just a liability; we can't afford to spend police time chasing after him when goes off on a whim like this. Roberts is needed for the door-to-door."

Lestrade came onto the radio. "Tell me what direction he was headed in, Roberts; what was he doing?"

"Can't say, Guv' it's too bloody dark! He was gone by the time I reached the fence; there's a ripped bit, and my guess is he just shot through, but there's any one of a half a dozen different directions- buildings, houses, and it's an intersection of two streets, so God knows where. I'm sorry. I just didn't realise he was so quick."

He could hear the DI’s sigh, despite the radio static. "Come back now, Roberts. And get instructions from Donovan about which houses to do your door to door canvassing."

Greg dug his phone out of his pocket and hit Sherlock's number on speed dial. No reply. He texted:

**10.43pm      Where are you?**

**10.45pm      Sherlock, what's going on? What are you investigating?**

**10.48pm     Answer your bloody phone!**

**10.50          Are you alright? If no reply, will have to call in BB**

That was Greg's final warning, and one he hated to use. But at 11pm, he gave up and called Mycroft's number.

The usual female voice answered on the second ring. "Detective Inspector, how may I help?"

"Have you got eyes on Sherlock? He's just gone AWOL from a crime scene and won't or can't answer his phone. That makes me worried."

"Hold on, please."

She came back on less than two minutes later. "We have a problem, Detective Inspector. He was tracked seven minutes ago on the CCTV on Cuthbert Place, running north, but not pursued. However, none of the next cameras within a radius of 800 meters has picked him up yet, and one of them should have by now. Suggest you investigate there. I will be informing Mr Holmes, our team and SO6. You're closer, so take action now." The line went dead.

_Shit._ This was Lestrade's nightmare, and it was happening now for real.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Because he was the one officer who didn't actually have anything concrete to do in the murder investigation going on in the vacant lot, Lestrade left Sally Donovan in charge of the crime scene and headed for the hole in the fence. Once through, he spotted the CCTC camera that was focused on the intersection of Cuthbert Street and Parsons Crescent. He crossed and carried on up Cuthbert Street. There was another junction up ahead about a quarter of a mile, controlled by traffic lights, so he guessed that was where the next camera might be. Somewhere between here and there, Sherlock had disappeared off the radar.

 _Why would he come up here? What did he realise when he said that bloody "OH" of his?_ Lestrade slowed his pace and really looked up and down the street. He could hear that snide comment echoing in his ears.  _You observe, but you do not see, Lestrade._

"What did you see, Sherlock?" he muttered to himself.

The road looked like any other East London road, lined by two storey terraced houses, built in the early part of the last century, to house London's East End working class cockneys. The only exception was where German bombs in the 1940s destroyed sections; these spaces were now occupied by flats built in the 1960s and 70s to house council tenants. The old blocks were marooned amidst re-furbished and gentrified houses, probably now owned by much better paid City workers. Parked cars lined both sides of the streets; BMWs and luxury cars for the houses, smaller compacts in front of the flats. Nothing out of the ordinary, then.  _Think! Sherlock realised something important that took him in this direction._

The body on the waste ground had been dumped at least four hours ago, according to the Crime Scene Examiner's best estimate, and the death occurred elsewhere before then. So, Sherlock was not actually chasing some suspect fleeing the scene. It had to be something he knew about the area, or something he had seen some other time that brought him up this road.

Greg kept walking slowly northward, hoping that this something would leap out at him and say "Sherlock is here." For the first two hundred meters, nothing spoke to him. Not a whisper of an idea. He checked his watch and realised that a half hour had passed since the young man bolted from the crime scene. He checked his phone again on the chance that a reply had been texted. Nothing. His worry was reaching an excruciating level. His imagination was beginning to play worst case scenario of a tall lanky figure lying somewhere in a dark alley, bleeding to death.

He took a deep breath and shoved the image away. He needed to keep his focus, try to think his way to Sherlock. He looked across the street at another of the old blocks of flats. This one was unoccupied and being refurbished, with scaffolding up the sides. He carried on a few feet, and then stopped.

Wait a minute. He'd just talked to Sally about whether this murder could be in any way connected to the electrician's murder six weeks before. That body had been found three miles away, again on waste ground behind a building project.  _What is it about this construction job that is catching my attention? What am I meant to see here, Sherlock?_

The name of the construction company was not the same as the one that ran the site where the electrician was found. But Greg knew that didn't necessarily mean anything. A lot of local sub-contractors could be involved in both sites. He wondered if any of their workmen might have been reported as missing.

He got on the radio. "Donovan- have you checked missing persons yet? See if anybody working for a construction company called Asrocap Ltd or involved in any way with a refurb job on Cuthbert Street has been called in as a missing person."

" Guv- they haven't come back yet on this body yet, but I'll tell them the new info and get back to you when they do. Found any sign yet of the Freak?"

He hated it when she called Sherlock that, but he didn't have the time or energy to waste giving her grief now. "Not yet; if he shows up back with you, tell me."

He walked across the street to take a closer look at the site. That's when he saw the torn plastic sheeting on the second storey scaffolding. The sheeting was usually erected to protect the workers from rain, and allow the brickwork repairs to set quicker, but one section was now loose and flapping in the wind. There were no lights on in the flats; clearly unoccupied. But that torn sheet niggled. A good contractor would have fixed it before leaving for the night. He climbed over the waist-height wall into the site. They were obviously re-doing the drains, as there were deep ditches surrounding the apartment block and then one heading back to the street. With only the street light for illumination, he started climbing the ladder at the scaffold, wishing to hell that he had brought a torch, because it was so poorly lit that he could hardly see where he was going.

Looking down the planking on the second level of scaffolding to where the plastic was torn, he saw what he had been dreading- a dark figure lay prone, face down on the wood.

" _SHERLOCK!"_

Two fingers against a carotid artery told him that Sherlock was alive, but the pulse was weak and thready.

"Sherlock, come on, wake up." He hoped to God that it was just a case of being knocked unconscious, but there was no response. He couldn't see well enough in the dark to see any obvious wounds, but was afraid to turn him over, in case there were broken bones. Neck and spinal injuries could paralyse, if he did something wrong in his panic.

He got on the phone again to Sally. "I've found Sherlock. He's alive, but injured. Radio it in and get an ambulance to the construction site on Cuthbert Street." If she used the police airwave radio to reach the Control Room, the ambulance would be given a priority over a call from a civilian phone. He also knew from past experience that SO6 would be monitoring his team's radio communications by now, and that Mycroft's people would be, too. He had no idea how serious Sherlock's injuries were or what had caused them. All he could do is hope that help got there fast enough.

Greg remembered that unlike him, Sherlock always kept a small torch in his coat, so he patted down the Belstaff until he found what he was looking for in the inside chest pocket. Switching it on, he looked first at Sherlock's face, which was not bloodied or bruised in anyway. There were no obvious injuries, no blood pooling underneath him. The DI stood and looked out through the section of torn plastic, in the hope that he would see the lights of an ambulance soon.

Nothing, the streets were empty and silent. As he turned, something down on the ground below the scaffold- something shiny- caught his eye, so he shone the torch into the ditch directly below where he was standing.

"Oh!"

There, in a crumpled heap, was a large man at the bottom of the ditch, lying very still. From the angle of his head, Greg guessed he might have broken his neck. A meter or so away from the figure was a large shiny metal tool, a plumber's pipe bender. At that moment, he heard the ambulance siren as it came through a red light and turned up the street. As it rolled to a stop and the crew leapt out, Greg flashed his torch and shouted, "Up here!"


	3. Chapter 3

Greg met Mycroft's eye as he strode up the hospital corridor toward the resus room. As much as an injured Sherlock featured in Lestrade's nightmares, it was the inevitable confrontation with Mycroft Holmes than he had always feared more. Until tonight, Sherlock's various bumps, scrapes and physical damage over the past five years had not yet led to his elder brother showing up at a hospital.

Lestrade had once sworn to Mycroft Holmes that he would keep an eye on Sherlock, and make sure that the Consulting Detective did not come to harm. It had been a hard promise to keep over the years, given the younger Holmes' willingness to push the envelope of safety right to the limit. The occasional relapse and detox under Greg's supervision was one thing that Mycroft had been willing to watch from afar, because it had never lasted long. All Greg had to do was threaten Sherlock with an end to the case work, and he'd get back on the straight and narrow. The odd mishap and visit to the A&E whilst chasing a suspect had also passed without bringing Mycroft out of the shadows.

But, this time was different and Greg knew it.

Sherlock had been taken by ambulance to the Accident & Emergency Department of the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel. The ambulance crew made Lestrade follow on behind them in unmarked police car driven by the two SO6 officers who had been assigned to look after Sherlock. They arrived almost simultaneously with one of Mycroft's men, so he told all of them where the ambulance was headed.

By the time Lestrade arrived at Whitechapel, Sherlock was already in the resus room being worked on by the A&E team, so he had no idea about how badly injured Sherlock was.

One of the nurses gestured to the chairs lining the corridor. "I'm sorry, Detective Inspector, but you will have to wait here." He had been waiting for about ten minutes when the double doors at the end of the corridor opened. Greg had a distinct case of déjà vu to the time when Sherlock had overdosed on the roof of the Peabody Buildings, as Mycroft came striding down the corridor, carrying his accusations of Greg's negligence as tightly furled as that umbrella of his.

This time, Mycroft walked straight past him and in through the doors of the resus room. As a family member, he had that right, and Greg did not. That fact pissed off Greg to an extraordinary degree, but he sat on his feelings. He'd been dealing with his emotions all night, and he told himself that he could handle this.

Lestrade tried to convince himself that he'd be feeling the same thing if it was one of his team members in there, but he knew that was a lie. The fact was that Sherlock had come to mean more to him over the years than just a "colleague." No matter how much Sherlock tried to keep him at arms-length, to ensure that their relationship appeared professional in the eyes of Lestrade's team, they both knew that there was an unsaid bond that pulled them together. It was one of the reasons why Sally Donovan did little to restrain her dislike of Sherlock; she could sense the connection and it made her jealous. The team resented their unspoken understanding, and the idea that much of their own reputation in the Yard was driven by Sherlock's extraordinary skills. Greg made a choice every time he involved the consulting detective; his need to solve the crime and see justice done was more important than any team member's ego or comfort. They didn't have to like him for it.

Yet, in return, Greg knew that Sherlock would never call him "friend"; the young man's lack of social skills, his refusal to modify his behaviour to suit others' feelings, his cultivation of a sociopathic persona- all of those things meant he was unlikely to acknowledge the tie of affection. His ritual abuse of calling the DI an idiot, an unobservant plod, and "just like every other useless police officer" was in part to ensure that the team did not think there was anything personal between the two men. Greg knew that and accepted it as necessary; he worked hard at not taking offence. He reckoned that to Sherlock, everyone could safely be catagorised as unintelligent. And yet, both Greg and Sherlock knew that when it came to it, the two could rely on each other to be there when it mattered.

Except tonight. When Sherlock had gone haring after his suspect, without telling anyone where he was going or what might happen when he got there, Lestrade had not had his eye on the young man. Yes, he had told Sherlock countless times to make sure someone knew, but he also knew that when that extraordinary mind pounced on a solution, ten steps in front of anyone else at a crime scene, he would not stop to explain himself. He knew it, and yet had been unable to stop Sherlock from taking absurd risks. Was it Sherlock's fault? Greg could not really blame the young man; he knew that poor impulse control and a lack of understanding about personal risk was something that came with the package that was Sherlock. He had promised Mycroft that he would compensate for that by protecting his brother. And tonight, he had failed in that duty.

After twenty more minutes of sitting, Greg rubbed the back of his neck and wished he could smoke a cigarette. His ‘on again/off again’ addiction to nicotine was worse than Sherlock’s with cocaine. Waiting for bad news was a real trigger, the craving almost made him sick to his stomach. As the minutes ticked by, he had time to blame himself and to pray that his lapse of concentration had not cost Sherlock his life. Greg was not sure how he would be able to deal with the guilt of that, nor how Mycroft Holmes would make him pay.

The swing doors on the resus room banged open and a trolley was pushed out, moving rapidly toward the lift at the other end of the corridor. Two junior doctors were positioned on either side and keeping their eye on the portable monitors. Standing up, Greg caught a glimpse of a head of dark hair, still strapped to a body board, neck braced and held rigid by plastic blocks.  _Oh God, please, not a head or spinal injury._

Mycroft emerged seconds later, listening intently to a doctor. Greg noted that the doctor had no blood on his scrubs, and hoped that was a good sign. When the conversation finished, and the doctor turned away back toward the resus room, Mycroft looked down the corridor to where Greg was standing, and locked eyes. The DI saw nothing to take comfort from in that glance.

Greg stood his ground and waited as the elder Holmes came to him.

"He's being taken for scans and then to emergency exploratory surgery- blunt trauma to the abdominal area."

"How serious is it? And what's with the spinal collar?"

Mycroft lips thinned in disapproval. "The doctors won't say anything other than they won't know if it's life threatening until the surgery. Apparently, it's notoriously difficult to diagnose the full extent from scans or x rays. There are clear signs of internal bleeding and they suspect organ damage- liver laceration, possible splenic rupture. The initial x-rays show a hairline fracture of his pelvis, as well as a fractured lower rib on his left side. And he has a serious concussion, which needs further investigation, because they suspect bleeding and swelling of his brain. All of which lead me to ask you a simple question, Detective Inspector- how was this allowed to happen?"

The question was asked in the mildest possible tone, yet Lestrade knew the implications that lay behind it, and the menace that was there, depending on what answer he gave.

Greg looked back down the corridor. He shrugged his shoulders and said lamely, "Well, you should see the other guy."

Mycroft scowled.

Lestrade continued. "As ever, Sherlock figured something out- and, no, I have no idea how, because you know as well as I do when he is in full-on mode, he doesn't stop to tell anyone anything. He must have figured out who the murderer was and where he'd be, just as easily as he earlier deduced the weapon used to kill the victims. We found that same weapon at the feet of a man who fit Sherlock's description. The suspect was dead, in a drainage ditch at the bottom of the block of flats where I found Sherlock on the second floor scaffolding. It doesn't take a Sherlock to deduce that when your brother caught up with the suspect, they fought, and Sherlock won."

Mycroft’s reply was icy. "Let's all hope that my brother doesn't end up in a score draw then, Detective Inspector, by dying himself. This…game… as you describe it, isn't over yet." Lestrade felt the full force of that chilling gaze, and nodded his agreement.


	4. Chapter 4

Greg gathered a stack of books from the shelf and placed them into the cardboard box. It brought a memory back.

"Sherlock, your books aren't organised according to the colours of the rainbow, but they're not alphabetical either. What's your indexing strategy?"

Sherlock turned around from the tiny kitchenette, where he was packing up a box of scarcely used cooking utensils. He looked puzzled. "Why would you want to know? What difference does it make to you?"

Greg smirked. "Well, next time Sam comes to visit, he might decide the re-arrange our books again, and I will need to explain it to Louise. She didn't get it the last time, and I got an earful about it for days."

The tall brunet turned back to his task, while he answered. "It's in subject order, and then by the most useful and most often consulted volume in that subject being at the extreme right. When I am in a hurry working on a case, I don't want to faff about looking for data. I doubt Sam would do that to your books, because he doesn't use them. It he does rearrange them again, just ask him to explain it to you. He won't mind."

"Oh." Well, there was little else Greg could say to that- all very logical and practical.

Lestrade carried on packing, but used the mirror over the mantel piece to keep an eye on Sherlock as the younger man kept examining the items he was putting in the box, as if he'd never seen them before. It made Greg smile- clearly, someone else had kitted out the kitchen when he had moved into the one bed flat on Montague Street five years ago, and Sherlock had never used most of the kitchen tools in the intervening years.

To Greg's eye, the younger man bore little physical evidence of his injuries from twelve weeks ago. The broken bones were surprisingly quick to heal; weeks of enforced meals and regular sleep helped. The organ damage took longer; Sherlock's liver had been sliced up by shards of broken rib, and the bleeding took quite a toll. When he went into shock during the CT scan that first night, they'd rushed him into surgery for what was a serious Grade V laceration. Sherlock was only now recovering from continuing discomfort in his right shoulder area and stiffness in his abdomen.

Greg never wanted to live through another night like that, sitting in the hospital waiting room, caged up with Mycroft, both anxiously waiting for news about what the exploratory surgery had found, and worrying about Sherlock's concussion. When in the middle of a scan, Sherlock's haemoglobin and hematocrit levels dropped suddenly, the next three hours were even worse, as Sherlock underwent an emergency laparotomy to repair the trauma and stablise his blood loss. For most of that time, Mycroft had been on his phone, speaking monosyllabically to whomever it was he was supposed to be meeting. What Mycroft Holmes got up to at nearly midnight was a mystery, but Greg knew better than to ask.

Sherlock survived the surgery and then spent six weeks in a rehabilitation clinic. Fortunately, this one was for physical injuries rather than substance abuse or psychological issues, so he'd had more freedom. That said, the young man had railed against being forced into complete bed rest, to help the liver heal and to deal with the hairline fracture of his pelvis, too. The latter was a stable Type A facture that kept him totally flat on his back in bed for three weeks. Greg had learned a lot about the injuries and their treatment over the past three months.

The swelling and small cranial bleed caused by the concussion kept Sherlock out of it for almost two weeks. Looking back on it now, from the safety of a successful recovery, that downtime had helped, because it stalled the inevitable shouts of "BORED" that began to emerge from the hospital room by the fourth week.

For the first three weeks, Mycroft had refused Lestrade permission to visit. That rankled, but at least the elder Holmes texted with regular updates as to how Sherlock was faring. Only later did he learn that this was at Sherlock's insistence. He'd refused to take any oral medicine unless the texts were sent.

It had taken a four-day hunger strike to get Mycroft to relent and allow Greg to visit. The first thing he knew about it was when a black car dogged his steps on his way to the St James tube station. He'd phoned Louise to say he'd be missing dinner, as Mycroft laid down the new rules of engagement: no promises of a return to hot cases, a ration while in the clinic of only one cold case a week. And only one visit a week to deliver it and pick up the results of Sherlock's work on the previous one. Greg wasn't sure if that was meant as punishment for him, or for Sherlock, but he was grateful enough to take it. Better than nothing.

Even now, after Sherlock had been discharged for more than a month, the same rules of engagement were being enforced by Mycroft. Greg had resorted to texting at first to try and get around the rules, but stopped when his phone mysteriously stopped working. Thinking it was broken, he'd bought a new one, only to have the same thing happen after one text to Sherlock. The penny had dropped then, so Lestrade tried using a landline at the Yard. This resulted in Sherlock's mobile being disconnected. So, reluctantly the two of them agreed to stick to the rules for a while longer.

He watched Sherlock open the kitchen cupboard below the sink and bend down to empty it of cleaning products, putting them carefully in a plastic box for transport. The manoeuvre was done with a little less fluidity than normal, Greg noted. When he was released, the doctors said that it might be another month before Sherlock could safely return to any rigorous physical activity, and counselled changes in the young man's diet and lifestyle. The only way he'd got out of the clinic was to agree to a regular session in a gym as the alternative to physical therapy under supervision. He was on a strict rota of follow-up visits to the clinic to make sure the recovery process continued. Greg had been accompanying him on the latest trips, as Sherlock was getting more reluctant to keep the appointments as he felt better. It gave them another chance to meet and talk about cases. It was only a week ago that Greg had slipped in a couple of questions about an on-going investigation into the death of a pair of twins. After a ten minute discussion, Sherlock had cadged a cigarette off Lestrade and they'd enjoyed an illicit smoke in silence.

As he lifted the next pile of books into the packing crate, he caught the title of a thick paper back directory- Tradesmen in London. That brought a smile to Greg, as it made him remember the first occasion when he was allowed to visit Sherlock at the clinic.

"What took you so long, Lestrade? You must not want to solve that Cuthbert Street case."

Greg had stood beside the bed and looked at the young man's smirk. "Ok, smarty pants. Tell me the tale. I assume that your brother hasn't had it out of you yet?"

"We're not exactly on speaking terms. I've been saving it just for you."

The older man sat down and watched the smile emerge on Sherlock's face. "You really haven't figured it out, have you? What's it like to have such a pedestrian intelligence?"

Greg huffed. "Might be pedestrian, but then at least  _I_  don't end up getting a pipe bender smashed into my liver. You do know that the suspect ended up with a broken neck after he fell from the scaffold?"

"Well, don't look at me- I was flat out on my face at the time. I can deduce, however, that he hit me with such force that the follow through unbalanced him. On my way down I hit one of the metal poles with the side of my head, and he must have tripped into me and over he went. I was out cold on the planking by the time he hit the ground."

Greg tried to visualise the fight, and then realised that Sherlock was looking at him with a slightly worried expression. "Relax, Sherlock, you're not a suspect in the murderer's demise. You can save me a lot of trouble, though, by telling me how the hell you figured out where he was hiding out when we don't even know who he was."

Sherlock stretched his neck a bit, so he could turn and look at Greg more easily. "His name was Bogdan Barlova- Bulgarian, and a work gang master. He brought in illegals from the Russian Caucus Republics, and hired them out all over East London. When they arrived, he confiscated their passports. The electrician was one of his- he murdered the guy when he threatened to report him to the UK Border Authority. Turns out, murder was his idea of labour relations- any complaints and the person simply disappeared. He wasn't the plumber, by the way. I got that wrong. The pipe bender belonged to the victim, who was the plumber. Should have seen that from the autopsy, look for the over-developed pollicis muscles in the palm of the hand- too much work with spanners. Barlova's were normal; your body on the waste ground had enlarged ones."

He seemed a bit short of breath, and Greg looked up at his face. Sherlock had closed his eyes.

"I'm tiring you out. I should probably go."

"Don't you dare. I've had to starve myself and endure a gastric feeding tube for the last three days to get this chance, so don't spoil it." Sherlock opened his eyes again and glared at Greg, before continuing, "You need to approach literally every construction project in the East End to see if a worker has mysteriously vanished. After that electrician died six weeks ago, I tried ringing as many companies as I could to see if there was a common sub-contractor working for them. Casual labour hired out for the day by Barlova would have been very hard to trace, but now that you know who to look for it will be easier. I had narrowed it down to a dozen candidates, but as soon as I heard the Bulgarian accent, I knew he was the one. I think there are probably at least a half dozen other victims, but Barlova was better able to dispose of their bodies than the two you found."

"How the hell did you know where the plumber worked? That was an unidentified body…"

Sherlock snorted. "I wanted to find the place where Barlova had done the actual murder before the body dump. There was always a chance that he wouldn't have had time to clean up the site and dispose of the weapon. I used the Google street scene on my phone to look down every road within a ten minute walk from where we found the body. The map data was only six months old, so would show a major construction site. Given the weight of the victim, and the lack of car tracks near that torn fencing I went through, he had to be carried there. Really, Lestrade, it's not beyond the wit of even someone like you to figure that sort of thing out."

"Sherlock, I'm not going to repeat what I will bet your brother was already told you. Your work on our cases does not involve chasing after suspects. You know that."

"I wasn't chasing a suspect, I was investigating a possible place where the murder might have taken place. I didn't know that the Bulgarian would still be there, trying to finish the plumber's work and clean up the blood at the same time."

"Why didn't you answer your phone or my texts?"

Sherlock looked sheepish. "I spent the last bit of battery life I had on the street level images. It died just after I spotted the Cuthbert Street flats being renovated."

Greg sighed. "That little oversight might just cost you the chance to work with us in the future, you know that, don't you?"

Now it was the young man's turn to sigh. "He can't do that to me. Mycroft just has to realise that if he tries to take away The Work, I will go stark, staring bonkers. The boredom alone would kill me."

Greg gave a rueful smile. "No one ever died of boredom, Sherlock. You nearly did by breaking the rules we had agreed about hot cases. You're going to have to spend a lot of time recovering. This won't be like putting a bandage on a cut; you've got months of physical therapy to get through, even after recovering from the surgery and the broken bones."

"Then you might as well tell Mycroft to reserve me a place at that psychiatric clinic again," he snapped. "I will not survive imprisonment if there is no hope of returning to cases. It's not the boredom, Lestrade, it's what the boredom drives me to that should worry Mycroft. He has to relent and let me return to The Work, or face the consequences."

Greg thought that through.  _The way he says "The Work", you can tell that it's a capital letter; the only thing he lives for._ He remembered the last time Sherlock thought he had been barred from case work; that had ended badly on a rooftop in south London and an intentional overdose.

"You know, you remind me of Sam when you get quite so obsessive. Did I tell you that he has graduated from toy car models? Now he is becoming the world's expert in everything about Formula 1 sports cars, right down to the colour saturation of the metallic paints used by Ferrari and how they are different from those used by the Honda team cars."

Sherlock's frown had softened a bit. "Then encourage him, Lestrade. High performance automotive engineering is a very respectable profession, and he would be admirably suited to it. Computer-aided component design doesn't need social niceties, just a sharp eye for detail and an enquiring mind; he has more than enough of both."

That made Greg smile. Sherlock always saw Sam's potential, whereas everyone else seemed to talk about deficits. It was one of the things that Greg liked about Sherlock. Unlike everyone else he routinely rubbished as being idiots, he never had a bad word to say about Sam.

"Lestrade, if you're going to keep daydreaming, you won't ever get the books packed before you have to leave to meet your wife at the dinner you are having at her sister's place."

That snide comment brought Greg's attention right back to the present.  _How the hell did he figure that out?_

"… and if you don't finish, I will have to do some of the heavy lifting. Of course, I think I'm ready for that, even if the doctors don't."

Greg resumed packing the books. "You're sure you're alright about moving flats?"

"Too late now, Lestrade; the van is due here tomorrow morning."

"This Baker Street place, isn't it a bit West End for you?"

"I know the landlady; worked a case for her years ago, involving a murder in Florida. She has lowered the rent as a favour. I refuse to let Mycroft find me a flat. I mean look at this." He held up an odd looking pasta spoon. "If this is what one of his minions thought I needed when I moved in here, he obviously wasn't briefed well. Mycroft's idea of the perfect flat for me would probably have bars on the windows and an electronic lock that only he can open."

Greg sniggered at the image.

Sherlock continued. "You are not entirely without blame, I know. Of course, I could afford a one bedroom flat on my own, if a certain Detective Inspector I know hadn't stuck his nose in my business."

Greg grimaced. He didn't think that Sherlock knew it was his idea. Once the young man had left the clinic and came back here, much of the sensible regime went out of the window. He couldn't be bothered to eat and sleep to a normal schedule. He had resumed hazardous experiments, much to the landlord's and the other residents' disgust. Lestrade had tried to stop by as much as he could, but Louise was getting annoyed about his absences. He'd met with Mycroft to talk it over.

"Your brother is rather high maintenance. As much as I am delighted to see him back on his feet, he's getting a little demanding in what he expects me to do for him. And he keeps banging on about when he can return to crime scene work."

"Never, if I have my way." Mycroft had not quite forgiven the DI for what had happened, but neither had their conversations been quite as frosty as the exchanges during the night at the hospital.

Greg just smiled at the elder Holmes. "Both you and I know that you won't have 'your way'. Not entirely. He's probably the only one you don't have power over. It must drive you batty at times. Why not just skip the overbearing protective brother routine and move on straight to a negotiated cease fire?"

"You've just admitted that Sherlock isn't competent to cope well on his own. So, why should that change?"

That comment made Greg stop and think. "He makes more of an effort when he's around someone he trusts. If I wasn't married and if I didn't have a life of my own, I could do more. But I can't. Louise quite rightly has first claim on my time when I'm not at work. What Sherlock needs more than anything is a friend who could move in, and share a flat with him."

Mycroft laughed. "A _friend_? Sherlock? Are we talking about the same person who is happy to describe himself as a sociopath?"

"Maybe that is stretching things a bit, but there are lots of single professional people in London who flat-share with people they don't know before moving in."

"Who on earth would agree to share a flat with my brother?

"With housing costs in London what they are, it wouldn't be impossible to find someone willing to share a two bed flat, someone who was acceptable to you and to Sherlock."

"A person would have to be certifiable to take him on."

"Maybe you're a little too out of touch to make that kind of judgment. People generally agree to share accommodation costs not out of love of living with other people, but because of necessity. You might find that it would be just the sort of thing that would remind Sherlock that he has to meet certain standards of behaviour. Maybe a place that has a resident landlord, too- someone who could remind him more regularly that he can't get away with crazy things- before it's too late and he's burnt the kitchen down again."

Greg thought about it further for a moment. "And, it would probably be better if he and his flatmate were the only tenants. Otherwise, a landlord would be more tempted to evict him if the other tenants complained about late night violin serenades."

Mycroft was looking at him with a curious look. "How do you know these things, Detective Inspector?"

"Well, I've rented flats in London all my adult life, unlike you. And I've been watching my nephew Sam grow up, been trying to talk to my sister about what kind of life he might manage when he is an adult. I don't want her to think that he is going to be with her forever; she has to let him go when the time is right."

"And how do you propose that I convince Sherlock about this new requirement to share his living arrangements?"

This time, Greg just laughed. "Oh, that doesn't take a Sherlock to figure out! Come on, Mycroft- he'll agree to it if you make it a condition of resuming his work on cases. You know that as well as I do."

Mycroft realised he'd just been outfoxed. Eyeing the Detective Inspector with a new respect, he knew that he had been backed into a corner that only a concession to Sherlock would allow him to escape. He sighed. “Well, you’re welcome to try.”

“No, it has to come from you.” Greg wasn’t going to let the elder Holmes put the burden on his shoulders.

When Mycroft came to asking the question, Sherlock had taken only a matter of minutes to think it thorough. "Yes, of course. I have just the landlord in mind, a place on Baker Street. Mind you, I can't imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to share a flat with me, but I will try anything, Mycroft, just to get back to The Work."

So, three weeks later Greg found himself packing books and any heavy items, and hoping that this time Sherlock would be able to keep out of trouble. It was just a matter of finding a flatmate now.

 


End file.
